devising

Pluraldevisings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of devise.

   The committee is devising a fairer voting system for next year.

   Devising the new curriculum took the staff a full year.

   Note

   The -ing form drops the final e of devise and carries every meaning of the verb, from inventing a scheme to leaving land to an heir in a will. As a gerund it sits very close to the noun, and the object tells them apart. The gerund takes its object directly (devising a plan took months). The noun needs of (the devising of a plan took months).

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of creating a plan or some object, especially the making of a will.

   The devising of the new policy required input from every department.

   Years of patient devising went into the family's estate plan.

   Similarplanning, formulation, design, creation, invention

   Note

   The noun works two ways. Uncountable, it names the activity of planning or inventing. Countable, it names the things that activity produces. A. R. Ammons, in Tape for the Turn of the Year (1965), takes comfort in the endless devisings of the natural world. For the activity, the usual construction is the devising of followed by the thing planned. The plural devisings belongs to writing about inventions themselves.

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